Why I am taking this class

Before I studied abroad in France during college, I had never opened a corked bottle of wine. I distinctly remember being talked through the first attempt by my Dutch friend, who was appalled that Americans could go through life without this basic life skill. During my six months there, we lived by the basic rules of "anything over three euros is fine" and "the label looks nice," due to the limitation of our student budgets. It wasn't until I moved to London after graduation that I realized that I needed a preference between sauvignon blanc and chardonnay when I was drinking with work colleagues, and everyone that I met was so much better at navigating wine lists than I was. My boyfriend and I started traveling to European wine regions to visit wineries and learn about winemaking from the source. We found it was better value to buy wine in continental Europe to avoid the UK's high taxes on wine, so essentially became amateur importers of most of our everyday wine consumption. We also took the WSET Level 1 course, which provided a framework to supplement our practical knowledge. Whenever we visited a winery in the UK, it was often founded by someone who formerly worked in the finance industry, so it is a wild retirement dream of ours to move to the countryside and run a winery someday. I am taking this class to learn about the economics of the wine industry so that I can be a better consumer and perhaps future producer :)